Interesting Serve Video

[westcoast777]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLf_MJXzBVg&feature=channel_video_title

Here's an interesting serve analysis video of Andy Roddick I came across while wondering if there are different hitting arm structures in professional baseball swings (from what I read, they are 12 similar, yet distinct, hitting structures. Intriguing, batters with the same hitting structure tend to have similar battings averages! For those interested, PM me and I will pass along the links/information). What do you make of the analysis? Is hitting with open hips an advantage? If so, how would a server naturally create this? Is the modern serve more like a baseball throwing motion than previously thought?

[bottle]

Cross-Thinking

The first comment under this somaxperformance video with the familiar sounding voice-over at YouTube is by Xeno Muller.

Xeno said, "Excellent job. I wish the serve had been explained to me like this 25 years ago. Now at least I can show this brilliant explanation to my sons. You would enjoy analyzing rowing technique except the sport is not as well funded as tennis. Instead of winning in tennis I rowed the single scull to Olympic gold and silver."

Besides what he says here, Xeno rowed on undefeated national college championship crews at Brown University. The crews I rowed on some time before turned that program into a varsity sport and enabled it to happen at the level that it did.

Xeno runs the Indoor Rowing Center at Costa Mesa, California, even has his name on an indoor machine with a horizontal flywheel. He has a huge internet presence. He's a charmer, a character and a great coach.

In one of the rowing forums after his YouTube videos, he says, "Try to inhale as you compress the legs and inhale in the drive," suggesting that most rowers do the opposite.

But he holds the fastest time in Olympic sculling history. So it's hard to argue with him. So I'm going to try that breathing technique on my serve (always in progress) before I move on to the baseball comparisons.

Nevertheless, westcoast777, I say, "Go ahead and crank hips more, farther and faster," with Roddick, McEnroe and Sampras as good models. Farther and faster may be different than "where are hips at contact." See where McEnroe and Sampras have their hips at contact? I know I plan to.

As to your specific baseball throwing question, I think that some serves are more like that kind of throw than others-- the ones in which knees and hips twist back and forth similar to a golfer's also.

Then there are serves in which splayed feet combined with extreme stance can provide body turn solely through simple compression and extension of the legs.

This is less like a baseball pitch and more like a toadstool motion-- no?

I usually don't feel facetious about it, however, since I know just how effective it can be.

For Xeno or you or anybody to serve better, I recommend Don Brosseau's globaltennisDC videos also at YouTube. Don provides a structure for anyone's serve like no other coach I know. He's big on figure 8's with the racket, and I've become that way, too.

Most of these ideas or experiments can be combined-- no?

[don_budge]

Row, row, row your boat...

...gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily...life is just a dream. And so is your tennis...bottle. Dream on Brother...and keep sharing.

When I first saw the post and looked at the video, that was the first thing that I noticed...that comment by Xeno. I thought of you.

Small world isn't it...sometimes it is only mere degrees of separation. Brown University rowing. Xeno and bottle...rowing through time. Good old don_budge sitting comfortably at the helm, sipping on a smoothie...in a hypnotic voice, with shamanic tendencies, reading Shakespeare, providing the cadence for their precise and well coordinated efforts. Dylan, the apprentice, in the aft...taking notes dutifully...while trying to keep his paper dry at the same time.

This could be the start of a beautiful friendship. (Walking off arm in arm at the Algiers airport...you be Bogart, I'll be the other guy, or the other way around).

"Most of these ideas or experiments can be combined-- no?"-bottle

Absolutely...yes! Sir!

But seriously, bot...this breathing technique is no experiment, no mere idea. Maybe you should take up a bit of yoga, you Svengali, afterall. This rhythm of the breath should certainly be incorporated into your swing. Big deep breath in with a nice long smooth backswing...then at the top as the racquet begins to fall, begin to exhale, finishing with a big blow...of your breath and racquet to ball. Swoosh! Martial arts...anyone?

How far to turn? Everyone has their limits...keep it comfortable. When teaching golf...I instruct all to stop turning, before it starts hurting. For God's sake, don't hurt yourself!

Throwing...like Arthur throwing Excalibur into the middle of the lake, where nobody will ever find it. Merlin standing like a sage in the background. Nobody will ever know. With his wizard's hat on. Like an ancient secret. "Let go, Arthur, my boy King", (in a whisper).

Don’s figure eights...the foundation of every good service structure.

Put it all together...you have one helluva service swing. Now the work begins...tactics! Psychology! Jung and Freud!...Skinner and Pavlov too!...on to Tilden...and Stan Smith!

Back in time, way back when...in the late 1500’s when I was a fledgling golfer, forty years old, and long after I ever was a tennis player, in fact I was dreaming that I had been a tennis player at that point, to tell the truth, I'd forgotten that I was...I purchased a set of cassettes entitled “Quiet Confidence”. Just my style, I figured. Six cassettes, around 20 to 25 minutes each. The guy on the tape hypothesized that golf was 20% technique and 80% mental. A revolutionary approach. The instructions were to lie down, in a quiet place and be absolutely relaxed while the narrator took you through a little hypnosis spiel...a shamanic journey. The sound of waves gently lapping at the beach in the background. Believe in yourself. You've done your training...don't worry, be happy. The instructions were to breath...keep breathing. When you get nervous or uptight or angry...the tendency is to quit breathing on a regular and natural basis. Ever catch yourself holding your breath when the pressure mounts? I guess that is why they tell you to count to ten when you get angry...so that you will resume breathing like a normal person...instead of huffing and puffing like a lunatic.

Basically the tape was a tool to tie the rhythm of your backswing and your swing with your breathing. It was an attempt to tie in the breathing with your confidence. It was an attempt to tie in the rhythm of your swing with your confidence. The associative law. The power of suggestion. Still with me? The theory was if you are breathing well...your confidence is extraordinary, just convince yourself, or better yet, just believe... that you are the man, with the plan. Let go. No worries. Cool runnings. Bobbie McFerrin. Take dead aim...and swing. Stop the inner dialogue. The nice rhythm sort of is an attempt to prevent you via hypnotic suggestion, from hurrying things at the crucial point of the top of the swing which enables you to swing more consistently...with less deviation in the timing. Thus, the less deviation... the less error. It helped my putting...and my second serve! Only €69.95!

Great post! Interesting video!

[tennis_chiro]

Breathing in the service "ritual"

A nice deep relaxing breath is one of the last, but critical elements of a good service "ritual" in the 20(Grand Slams) to 25(all other events) seconds you have to step up to serve. Oh, if only we had a real shot clock that the umpire could start at an appropriate time after the point ends!

don

[bottle]

~

This is amazing stuff, fellows. I'm so blown away by what you guys choose to react to. And I feel a bit vindicated after a great but rough time when, after returning from the court, I spent all day watching Xeno holding forth at the Indoor Rowing Center, Costa Mesa-- on YouTube.

That would have been all right. It's a free country (sorry, Steve-- a free world). But my partner, Hope, wanted me to come out of my office and help with preparations for a dinner party. The Detroit concierge business of this former top level business consultant now is "Hope and Help," but if I join a little more wholeheartedly we'll call it "Hope and Helpless."

Rowing is an almost impossible sport to relate to other things in the way it should be. But if you want to see a good coach (a rose is a rose is a rose)
check out Xeno's unbelievable short videos. He's first the world's fastest sculler (though he suspects the upcoming Olympics will take his record). He's also a coxswain, though a bit large for that. And a coach who doesn't seem like a coach since he's usually demonstrating as he talks.

A warning, however. If you go over there you may start to row. I know.
I know a lot about obsessions. In Winston-Salem I hiked up from the Salem
Courts five miles to Salem Lake one day. The guy who ran the rental concessions begged me for an hour to coach the Wake Forest University women-- an informal club with nice expensive equipment rotting on the ground since there wasn't a roof over it to protect it. I'd been there before, however, three times in fact, at Brown and then West Virginia University and Skidmore College. All three places have great boathouses by now as a matter of fact. Amazing what a few victories can do.

But I turned away from Salem Lake and hiked back to the Salem courts. Hence all this tennis thought. I think the three of us should gang up and teach Xeno a better serve. Over and out.